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New submitter phrackthat writes with news that California State Senator Leland Yee (D-S.F.) says he wants regulations to track who owns and uses 3-D printers. Yee's comments come in response to the recent news of Defense Distributed's successful test-firing of a 3-D printed gun.
"He's concerned that just about anyone with access to those cutting-edge printers can arm themselves. 'Terrorists can make these guns and do some horrible things to an individual and then walk away scott-free, and that is something that is really dangerous,' said Yee. He said while this new technology is impressive, it must be regulated when it comes to making guns. He says background checks, requiring serial numbers and even registering them could be part of new legislation that he says will protect the public. Yee added, 'This particular gun has no trace whatsoever.'"

Lets just clear something up right now, gun bans have NEVER worked and will NEVER work because of one simple flaw in the logic. you see criminals? DON'T FOLLOW LAWS which is why they are called criminals, fucking duh!

Take Mexico, a country with a 100% ban on guns, you can't even one a 22 in that country...are the criminals throwing rocks at each other? Nope they do like all the other criminals with connections and buy from the former USSR where you can buy a crate of RPGs for the cost of a used BMW and where you can get a case of AK47s thrown in with every purchase over $50k.

This is as fucking retarded as trying to regulate or ban copper pipes because somebody might make a zip gun. I mean have you SEEN this "gun"? You are gonna be lucky if it fires even a single clip before being just trashed, in fact I've seen zip guns that make better weapons than this thing, and it took a $50,000 3D printer to make a gun that had less quality than what you can make in any machine shop for less than $200!

I'm sorry but this entire thing is just fucking retarded, every major city like Chicago where they have made it practically impossible for a law abiding citizen to own a gun has become a criminal paradise and why not? Don't have to worry about prey fighting back when even the cops in these areas tell you "don't resist, just beg real nice after they are done raping and looting and maybe they won't kill you". Its fucking disgusting is what it is, we should be teaching people how to defend themselves from these fucking scum and instead we are creating a nation of prey, that is ALL they are, they are prey and the wolves will feed and feed well.

The republicans are in a pickle. If they support 3D gun printing, they hurt gun manufacturers, which is what they really are supporting ($$$$).
Gun manufacturers rarely donate money and what they do is peanuts compared to what non-gun related businesses throw around.

Mexico is a bad example, it is obvious the ban isn't enforced at all because all the criminals have weapons, and the reason is of course that the government and police are massively corrupt and are part of the criminal gangs themselves.

And the US government is massively corrupt, not at the level of Mexico but there's one for that: "yet"

It may be worth adding "inevitable" as well, because power is always corrupting. That's sort of the point of our (largely ignored) Constitution -- it was designed to shackle government because the greatest threat anyone ever faces, is their own government grown too fat and too powerful.

I can't really pin point exactly when it happened but, at some point, things changed. When the Constitution was authored it was a list of enumerated powers - it was a list of things that the government had the power to do. It has become, in practice, a list of things the government can't do (meaning that they think they can do anything not specifically prohibited). The differences between those two are vast and important.

...and an extremely poor record of enforcing its laws. Why not try a European country like the UK which has extremely strict gun laws and a record of strict enforcement. Wikipedia provides a nice table [wikipedia.org] of the rate of gun deaths per 100,000 people and we find that the US has 10.20 and the UK 0.25 i.e. over 40 times fewer people are killed in the UK by guns even accounting for the difference in population. Worse, if you just look at gun murders (i.e. exclude suicides and accidents) the US rate is 80 times that in the UK.

We all agree that government restrictions are to be avoided whenever possible but in the case of gun control there is a clear trade off: either you have strict controls (with strict enforcement) or you have an exceedingly high rate of deaths due to guns. If the US is happy with one of the highest rate of gun deaths in the world then that's its choice: it knows one reliable way to reduce it if it so chooses.

That being said controlling 3D printers because of this is just daft. You can almost certainly make a gun with a CNC machine (in fact a quick Google search turned up this video [youtube.com]). They have not controlled these so why should a 3D printer be any different? They can machine plastic just as easily if the sole concern is detectability.

Err.. a) Mexico doesn't have a total ban on guns (gun ownership is a constitutionally protected right), it's just been limted to purchasing from a single army-run shop in Mexico City; b) Mexico happens to have this large nation to the immediate north with relatively limited small arms gun control, and the border heading south is only marginally guarded; so unsurprisingly c) The US Justice Department estimates 70% of guns recovered from Mexican cartels were legally purchased in the US. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5guv1zxttoSAF-NOJzZkAJV2R93mg [google.com]

I wouldn't be shocked to hear cartels are also buying abroad, but why bother when you can get most of what you need immediately to the north?

Why do we have laws at all then? Why do we say don't have sex with children when criminals are just going to do it anyway?

Really bad analogy. Your implication is that we could stop people from having sex with children by banning children.

The analogy you're looking for is that just like we have laws that carry penalties for abusing kids, we have penalties for killing people. Using rifles, or using blunt instruments like pipes and bats (which are used far more often than rifles to murder people, says the FBI).

So yes: we have laws that "ban" murder, by making it really suck to be a murderer that's been caught having murdered someone. Just like it sucks to be someone that's been caught having abused a kid.

I finally figured out what was causing it after the second one. The good thing is that eventually, if you don't kill your children in a fit of rage, you might get grand children. I find that Grand Children are much better than children. When they aren't fun anymore you can take them back to their parents. I like to fill them up on candy first right before I take them back.

If the only thing keeping you from having sex with children is a law stating so, then you're beyond all help as it is. Laws aren't made for the righteous, they're made so that *when a transgressor is caught* there's a system in place to apply punishment.

There is a difference between laws designed to regulate availability of material goods and laws designed to punish human beings.

Exactly. Politicians just love that former category, precisely because it never works. It never works and never solves the problem, so there is always a menacing problem they can promise to do something about the next time they campaign. It also has the side-effect of requiring a police state to have even a slight hope of enforcement, which again is great from the perspective of most politicians.

Politicians know the War on Drugs doesn't stop people from acquiring drugs. They know that mass shootings overwhelmingly tend to happen in "gun free" zones. They know even an outright ban on guns doesn't stop criminals from acquiring them. They know someone not afraid of a murder charge isn't going to be deterred by a weapons violation. They probably know that the USA has one of the highest murder rates of the industralized world... unless you exclude Chicago and a few other cities where it is practically impossible to legally own a firearm; then the USA has one of the lowest. They understand all of this.

They are interested in perpetuating the problems. It's what wins elections. It's what makes people increasingly feel they need government intervention. It's fun to think of them as a bunch of morons who couldn't find their ass in the dark, but this is called allowing sentiment to interfere with judgment.

Don't forget that the "right" people will still be able to own weapons. One famous "anti-gun" columnist who frequently wrote about the need to ban guns shot a teenager who was swimming in his pool. He thought no one should own guns except of course for elite liberals such as himself. A common attitude.

It depends a lot on culture and government as well. Nothing exists in a vaccume. What works for Australia and Britain won't work for the US. What works in Russia won't work in Mexico. China is different than Chile. All of these are pretty much "no duh" statements when you think about them, but most people try to bottle one statistic inside a glass jar as though the size of the country, population, cultural norms, etc have no effect on the outcome of a law. His point, while you can poke holes in bits and pieces all day long, is essentially correct.

Criminals don't follow laws, and especially in the case of the US, the population is way to large and already well armed enough that it would be impossible to police and secure guns. The better option is to place reasonable limits on them (such as the ones that are already in place and have been in place for decades), punish people who use guns for evil purposes (killing, robbery), and let law abiding citizens protect themselves (gun ownership and carry permits). Basically, what has been going on. Instead politicians decide they can win votes by trying to either

a) Invent a big scary imaginary monster, oh no, it'll eat you. Nevermind the fact that this gun is impractical for any realistic purpose, all of which have already been gone over elsewhere orb) Convince people that someone in an office somewhere, writing something in a book, will somehow protect them. Nevermind the fact that guns that can't be detected by metal detectors have been outlawed for nearly 30 years (if I remember the date right). Nevermind the fact that people can already make more practical firearms at home. Basically nevermind the fact that this breaks no new ground at all anyway.

I call them feel-good laws. They make lawmakers feel like they've done something, they make people ignorant of what laws are already on the books, or the true capabilities of guns feel safer, but they basically do nothing except try to restrict law abiding citizens. There's no point to them at all and they have no real impact on criminals or crime.

Anyway, I'm off the topic, and if your an Aussie and disagree, then feel free to pass all the gun laws you want. I mean that, in a non-sarcastic way, because that's what your country wants and what your culture wants. As an American, I don't want more (or less really) gun laws, I think things are fairly well balanced as they are, the media just likes to blow things out of proportion. All statistics aside, those are cultural differences.

Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49% lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation's population grew. The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm -- assaults, robberies and sex crimes -- was 75% lower in 2011 than in 1993. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades.

And yet, every day when I look at google news, there is another story about some kind of gun violence/accident in some place thousands of miles from me. It's like a constant drumbeat in the media to get people to think things are so bad, something must be done. And politicians of course, are never hesitant to restrict people's rights or acquire yet ever more power. America's problem with guns is a media conspiracy that makes politicians cum in their pants.

Thanks for the link but you'd think common fricking sense would tell you its not gonna work. does it work in the UK? Sure it does and in Australia too because they are islands and its really not that hard with today's tech to police an island.

Now compare this to North and South America, which you would have to look at as one entity since the massive borders and literally millions of fast boats (coke boats) and light aircraft means that the borders between countries on this land mass mean jack and squat, and

To be fair, he didn't call New Yorkers cowards, but referred to a state of mind he called NYC cowardice which seems to be more of a political philosophy that's often promoted by the media.

I don't think that gun laws are easy to enforce anywhere in the world, whether or not somewhere is an island. Stuff has always been smuggled into and out of places for as long as there's been civilisation. The importance of gun laws is to raise the bar on gun ownership and make it easier to prosecute anyone that you catch with a gun. In the USA, you can't just throw someone in prison for carrying a gun whereas gun laws make that a lot easier.

However, if you raise the bar on carrying a gun, that also means that criminals are more likely to use their guns if they deemed it necessary to carry them as the penalties tend to be a lot harsher for armed robbery.

The net effect is already known. We have jurisdictions with strict gun control in the US, and there's no causative decrease in armed crime. Gun control, at best, hopes to effect the supply, the supply is already massive so it can't do much there, at worst it's an attempt to control ownership which no law can accomplish: laws can only regulate legal commerce. Black markets just pop up and go around fhem when there is massive demand, and with the already massive supply prices stay relatively low. Example: the so called drug war. No impact on supply or demand. And with vigorous gun laws, you will create a black market.

So if you want to reduce supply, you have to get rid of guns: confiscation or buy back with significant incentives, and even then you can't eliminate supply. But thats what youd have to do. And to reduce demand you have to both reduce crime, and increase penalties on gun crimes to something so severe you both deter and slowly eliminate law breakers.

If you're serious about reducing gun violence, look at the root cause of most of it: drug control laws. Get rid of drug prohibition and a large percentage of all violent crime goes away. Anything else, including gun control laws, is only going to make a minor difference, at best, and is likely to just make things worse. You have to eliminate the root cause of violence, the gun is not the cause, it's just one means, and don't kid yourself if a lot of money is available to a criminal element, they will get all the guns they want no matter what laws you pass.

Suicide rates aren't effected by firearms control laws. For example, in Japan the suicide rate almost twice that in the US, and in both the UK and Australia the Suisse rate did not decline after gun bans were instituted. And if you really need proof, here's a quote from the NC Juvenile Justice Department:

"Of all children and adolescents, those incarcerated in the juvenile or criminal justice systems are at the highest risk of serious suicide attempts (Gray et al., 2002; Penn et al, 2003). Despite around- the-clock supervision and a lack of access to firearms, the methods for suicides and attempts used in this population tend to be more violent and more successful than those of young people in the general population (Penn et al, 2003)."

Dispondent people find a way, so don't pat yourself on the back that gun control laws will prevent suicides. They won't, suicide isn't a gun control issue, if you really care about suicide prevention drop the political rhetoric.

Nevermind the fact that this gun is impractical for any realistic purpose, all of which have already been gone over elsewhere

Actually, they've gone several steps further with another design, having printed a lower receiver for an AR-15 (the one part that, under BATF regulations, constitutes a gun), and have raised its reliability from the original six rounds before breaking to more than 600 rounds before breaking (they're discovering that the printed part has different design constraints -- where a milled aluminum receiver has sharp corners, a printed part needs to have curves to reduce points where stress concentrates, because the plastic is weaker). However, as assembled, it's hardly a concealable or undetectable weapon, with the sixteen-inch metal barrel, upper receiver, and action. However, as you allude, a wholly 3D-printed firearm has a long way to go before it's as effective as the cheapest 'Saturday Night Special'. But to a politician, that's not important; what's important is that the fear and paranoia be whipped to a frenzy now, so that draconian knee-jerk measures can be put in place while people are feeling about the subject, not thinking about it; it's so much easier to whip up emotion than reason.

One of those rare times I wish I had mod points... gun violence went down after the ban, as did the murder rate (2-3%, as I recall). The rate of violent crimes went up, though. Does a reduction in murder justify an increase in rapes, assaults, and robberies?

Guns are equalizers. A 9mm pistol makes a 5 foot tall 100 pound woman the equal of a 6 foot 2 inch 190 pound man. This assumes of course that she is competent with it. He may kill her but trying to rape her is a dicey proposition. Given the banning of guns in the US I have no doubt that violence will explode. Crime in the US is different than Australia. I've heard conflicting things about crime in Australia since the ban although it is certain that gun deaths have decreased. I guess getting stabbed gives you a higher chance of survival than being shot. I admit that guns are more efficient.

Why did he get modded down? look at the history of gun laws in this country and like poll taxes a LOT of them were designed to keep them "uppity niggers" from having guns. Look at how the media has demonized the so called "Saturday Night Special"...wanna guess which minority favored those for home protection in the 40s-70s?

I can't remember which black leader said it, i think the head of the rainbow coalition, that "No matter how you feel about gun laws if you look at them, trace them back to their roots, you'll find a lot of them can be summed up as "fear of an armed negro" because an armed negro can fight back, its a lot more risky to try to lynch an armed negro than a defenseless one" and sadly he is right, look up who wrote the gun laws of the 30s-70s and its the same ones that were supporting Jim Crow and separate but equal. No matter how you feel about the gun laws i urge you to read more about it, what you find will probably shock you.

It increases the odds he's also carrying a gun. It increases the odds he's had plenty of practice with it, since its legal for him to carry it around.

It increases the odds of a shootout. It increases the odds you get shot. (Maybe he's a better shot than you. Maybe he approaches you with it drawn while yours is still holstered. Not much of an edge for you.

It increases the odds an innocent bystander gets short. It increases the odds of an accidental discharge. It increases the odds someone irresponsible ends up with a gun in their hands. It increases the odds someone irresponsible ends up with -your- gun in their hands.

I'm Not saying I wouldn't want to have a gun in my hands if I were attacked, but its wrong to oversimplify it so that is the only scenario we look at.

It increases the odds he's had plenty of practice with it, since its legal for him to carry it around.

Legal to carry is completely orthogonal to plenty of practice, because you don't practice with it while you're wandering around town. Further, odds are good he's already a felon, and is already barred from carry, if not ownership.

It increases the odds of a shootout. It increases the odds you get shot. (Maybe he's a better shot than you. Maybe he approaches you with it drawn while yours is still holstered. Not much of an edge for you.

If he has a gun, and I have no gun, then he's definitely got the edge.

It increases the odds an innocent bystander gets short. It increases the odds of an accidental discharge. It increases the odds someone irresponsible ends up with a gun in their hands. It increases the odds someone irresponsible ends up with -your- gun in their hands.

Yes, there are potential negative outcomes. But in the scenario of a more physically powerful attacker, none of them are very different from the already extant outcome, for the attacked in any case. Meanwhile, preventing or reducing attacks is everyone's responsibility, and we are collectively falling down on the job.

I'm Not saying I wouldn't want to have a gun in my hands if I were attacked, but its wrong to oversimplify it so that is the only scenario we look at.

You and your straw man must be cuddled close tonight. I never claimed that was the only scenario. You wanted something to complain about, but I didn't say what you want me to have said.

It increases the odds of a shootout. It increases the odds you get shot. (Maybe he's a better shot than you. Maybe he approaches you with it drawn while yours is still holstered. Not much of an edge for you.

It increases the odds an innocent bystander gets short. It increases the odds of an accidental discharge...

I'm Not saying I wouldn't want to have a gun in my hands if I were attacked, but its wrong to oversimplify it so that is the only scenario we look at.

It is evident you don't know the psycology of a rapist, or indeed most criminals.

Most rapists, in particular, seek to exert power and control over their victim. The best way to assure success is to target the most vulnerable, because rapists are cowardly and are afraid of failing to obtain that control and power (often they lack power and control in other aspects of their life and are loathe to face that failure when they don't have to).

Rapes are virtually unheard of in public places--they happen at night or in secluded places--the chance of an innocent bystander being caught in crossfire is basically nil in those cases.

Rapists don't tend to be gun enthusiasts--they may brandish a gun or a weapon when they commit the offense but the purpose is to intimidate and control; they generally lack the courage to discharge the weapon. A dead victim can no longer be threatened or intimidated, and if they've gone and shot their victim they've lost control of the situation. If a potential victim were to pull a gun in the vast majority of cases they would flee, not fire back. If the odds are against the attacker they will flee. Rapists who are armed almost NEVER approach with a gun drawn--they will only brandish the weapon when they are very close.

The studies cited about an increase in violent rapes and assults in Australia is not really surprising at all knowing this--it isn't specific to Australia's society--though different societies would respond differently to changes in criminal laws all rapists share some common traits, and the more confident a rapist can be that a victim is defenceless the more likely they will attempt the crime.

The kind of situations you describe, where victims have their weapons used against them or are bysanders caught in crossfire, mostly happen as a result of organised crime or street gang activity. The target and the perpetrator are both criminals, and both are probably armed with illegally obtained weapons, and the motivation is not control or personal gain (like robbery--motive is to obtain something of value not to kill). Gang members kill each other out of revenge--to settle a score. Such people wouldn't go through the bother of using a 3d printer--they have their sources of illicit weapons already.

The most visible, but most rare as well, victims of gun violence are those of the emotionally disturbed, generally suicidal deviants. They are very rare cases actually, and if a bystander was to fire back the situation is proabably already exceeedingly dangerous already.

Gun control is treating a symtom generally--it is not very effective. Cun-making-control even less so. Treating the causes would work better but is more difficult and less politically expedient. Those causes are many and range from urban blight/decay to public school systems/modern "self-esteem based" teaching philosophies that foster sociopathic behaviour in children to family breakdown to lack of comunity resources to help raise children (and as a result are lured by gangs). Gun violence is a complex problem with no single easy answer. Unfortunately the media advocates quick, easy answers and people demand them, and ultimately laws are crafted on that basis.

Let me turn that question around: how many people would you like to have raped for every person you save from death? By my rough calculation (and that's assuming that both homicide decline and rape increase are causally related to the ban in equal proportions), it amounted to something like 40 rapes for each prevented death in Australia.

Fact: Violent crime went UP by 40% since the great gun grab in Australia.

I ran the numbers myself a couple of months ago. I have a spreadsheet with my finding HERE [harrelsonfamily.org]. This spreadsheet has links to the sources for all data. It includes homicide (down a little), robbery (down a little), assault (way up), and sexual assault (way up). To put it another way, for every single person NOT murdered, an additional 671 people were assaulted. Those are the FACTS. My spreadsheet lays it all out, with data from the Australian Government.

I invite you to inspect the data sources and my formulas. It is all open-source, so to speak. You can look for traces of deception yourself. Once you are done, you can grab a nice steaming helping of crow.

DISCLOSURE: I used data from 1995 (just before the grab) and 2007 (latest data I found).

To make your study meaningful, you should also take a few more data points both before and after the ban. This is so that you can identify any trends that were in place throughout the ban and were not really affected by it. To the best of my knowledge, both the decrease in homicide and the increase in assaults were in that category.

Carrying a concealed firearm has ALWAYS been banned in Australia. The ban in question was ONLY for semi-automatic longarms. Any forcible rape connection is utter nonsense unless you think Australian women were packing assault rifles in their handbags up until the ban.

And the US with one of the highest crime rates in the world has one of the highest gun ownership rates.

If you remove the crime numbers from Progressive Democrat-controlled major cities with the strictest gun control laws like Chicago, NYC, etc, the US crime rate is one of the lowest.

Keeping crime and criminals in check requires cooperation and action from both police and citizens. Disarming half the crime-fighting force does not help reduce crime. It not only requires a much larger and more brutal law enforcement arm to maintain order, It turns that disarmed half into helpless victims and erodes trust, legitimacy, and respect for the government and for police, as well as reducing citizen cooperation with police. It promotes increasing hostility by citizens towards police and the government.

This is the reality for the US and it's society & culture. Maybe gun control works in Australia or the UK. If they're happy, that's great. Different solutions to fit different nations and cultures. It's not just gun control. What works in N. Korea wouldn't work in the UK. What works in France wouldn't work in China. Rinse and repeat for other nations/cultures and various laws/policies/etc. This is true for a large number of things including gun control.

Do you think gay marriage would work in Saudi Arabia? Do you think a death penalty for being LGBT would work in the US/UK? Same thing for gun laws seeking a national database/registration and outright bans in the US. It would take an extremely intrusive, controlling, brutal, and tyrannical police state to have any hope of even beginning to enforce such bans/restrictions in the US. Many millions would die.

I have posted this previously, but it fits here. Australia banned almost all guns around 1996 or so (too lazy to look it up right now). Here [harrelsonfamily.org] is a spreadsheet that shows the real effect. Murder went down a little, but for every life saved, there were almost 700 additional assaults and sexual assaults. Violent crime went up by 40% overall. Those are the FACTS. The spreadsheet has links to the hard numbers from the Australian government.

The more you reduce the presence of firearms by honest citizens, the less they are used to prevent crime.

Some numbers for you:

There are approximately 300,000,000 guns in the US (give or take).2011 reported 11,101 gun homicides. That means that the gun grabberswant to restrict the rights of ALL Americans to try to stop the 0.0037%of guns that cause the problem. To put it another way,approximately 45% of households own guns. Assuming a uniformdistribution of family sizes across gun-owning and defenselesshouseholds, that means that 140,200,000 people are in a household withguns (US population in 2011 is 311,591,917). The government wants toinfringe on the rights of over 300 million people to stop 11,101criminals (assuming one criminal per murder). That means that gun-control laws are trying to stop the 0.008% of gun owners that dobad things. To put it another way, for every single murderer, there are 12,630 honest gun owners. Wow! Clearly, guns are indeed a problem.

To throw lead downrange, you need ammunition, which is not easy to get either.

Pretty sure "terrorists" in TFA are not going to be stopped or "get away scott-free" because they weren't able to print some damn plastic guns. Apparently, it's more likely these days that they would buy a pressure cooker.

If Michael Moore hasn't made a documentary about the dangers of 3D printers, but politicians are screaming like it's a TEOTWAWKI level event, it kind of puts things in perspective.

But you know, I can't really blame politicians for being unusually stupid in this situation. I've seen more uninformed posts on Slashdot, that anywhere else on this topic. Building and shooting a gun with a 3D printer is on about the same level as sticking a bullet in a short piece of metal pipe and hitting it with a hammer. Sure, it's possible, but it's not particularly smart and isn't going to be very effective either.

Much of the below discussion has little to do with rational fears. 3D printed gun control has become the latest straw man for the greater agenda of anyone who has a firearm phobia.

As someone who does actually build controlled munitions-list items using 3D printers ( legitimately, with appropriate permits and documentation on export ) I know that there aren't really any threats posed to society caused by 3D printing. Yet, the international restrictions that already exist around what I do with 3D printing on a weekly basis adversely affect amateur participation in scientific fields such as astronomy. These is an area in which 3D printing could significantly benefit society that is significantly affected by ITAR, as low-light equipment is controlled. The same laws that affect me caused DEFCAD's files to be taken offline - not that that wasn't easy to see coming. I'm sure they'll find a way to get most of their stuff back online though if they choose to.

So why is there so little debate on why people should be able to print anything they like? Why aren't people arguing that defence related materials that are 3D printed have little and limited military use? Why are so few people defending DEFCAD's work, when most of what they are doing breaks no laws? At least not what's contained within the US?

In many ways, their video [defcad.com] makes a lot of sense. And it should have particular relevance to those who hold high the ideals of open source.

Slashdot used to be a place where the more informed minds came to discuss worthy topics of contemporary news. Lately I'm starting to realize though just how much this is no longer the case.

I second that. 3-D printers aren't a very economical way to create guns, since they cost tens of thousands of dollars in the first place. Second, you have to know how to use one. Third, this lawmaker would be imposing further regulations on businesses that already use this technology (jewelry manufacturers and dentists, to name a few). Sounds to me like Yee didn't do his homework on what 3D printers are and what they do. Yeah, some of them can make a gun, but that's not even the most remotely useful thing they do. Maybe Yee should ban the citizens from learning metallurgy as well, since that goes much further in creating a high-quality gun than some printed plastic one.

The irony is that idiocy like this is what convinced the founding fathers that the 2nd amendment was a pretty neat idea in the first place.

(Petty bureaucrats and politicians trying to micromanage life; preventing people from going about legitimate business; trying to control all weapons, other consequences be darned. This doesn't seem to cover onerous taxes, but coming from a California Democrat it's close enough.)

If a guy uses homemade pistols a lot, they are easy to find. They are in the hospital with bits of plastic embedded in their face. The 3d-printed gun is NOT "the Liberator." It is really "the Darwinator."

I am 100% for freedom, but I am 110% for safety. I would never shoot The Liberator because having a plastic barrel is simply a horrible idea. While technically this thing IS a gun, it is not MUCH of a gun. I would rather be armed with a baseball bat than that thing.

Before 3d printers, people that wanted a cheap and lousy gun without buying a real one would just assemble one from some metal pipes and other junk, the old Saturday Night Special, Zip Gun, or Junk Gun.As to passing through metal detectors, who really cares, after all anyone that can't afford a real gun from illegal sources isn't going to be going into the areas 'protected' by metal detectors.

Guns and explosives are easy to get thanks to America's right to bear arms. The representative would have 3d printer regulation before gun regulation? That makes absolutely no sense at all. Since 3d printers can be made by hobbyists at home, effective regulation is impossible. Not to mention that firing a 3d printed gun as a proof of concept and having an effective weapon are two very different things. A car is a far more dangerous weapon than a 3D printer. Are you afraid to drive?

Why not regulate lathes? They can be used to make a barrel of a high powered rifle.Why not regulate mills? They can be used to make land mines.Why not regulate sheet metal? They can be used to make the skin of missiles.Why not regulate screwdrivers? They can be used to make bombs.

Why not just regulate and put a serial number in each and every bullet manufactured? I doubt that anyone would be able to 3D-print a bullet and its charge for many years to come.

I've recently been musing on the idea that the reason for the Fermi Paradox and a huge point against Kurweilz's optimism that we'll reach the Singularity in a just couple of decades, is that a civilization's regulatory agencies are so slow to react to technological advances. If lawmakers don't allow 3D printers to flourish, then there won't be the consumer demand that motivates the next generation of printer, and the one after that, etc. Eventually the environment will be too fucked and the natural resources exhausted before humanity can develop the technology to transcend its limitations.

"Protection" is a disease. The government is not obliged to protect you. Congress has upheld that police are not required to protect you. Protecting yourself and your family is your responsibility. Life is dangerous. Be prepared. More folks die in car crashes, we don't ban cars or streets. Zip-Guns made of junk can kill you, hell, a plastic knife can kill you if sharpened properly, a broken window tied to a stick is a lethal weapon of opportunity. Limiting freedom should never be the answer to fear. The answer is to simply be aware of the danger you face in every day life, and protect yourself. Regulations like these are cancerous leaches of tax-payer money.

We really need to change the 2nd amendment, or create a new one clarifying that we have the right to bear technology, cryptography, photography, computers, and firearms included.

"He's concerned that just about anyone with access to those products can arm themselves by tearing out sharp edges as makeshift knives. 'Terrorists can make these knives and do some horrible things to an individual and then walk away scott-free, and that is something that is really dangerous... it must be regulated when it comes to making knives. He says background checks, requiring serial numbers and even registering them could be part of new legislation that he says will protect the public. Yee added, 'This particular knife has no trace whatsoever.'"

Look, honorable dumbass, just because it's technological doesn't give you a free pass to enforce your own personal brand of oppression.

Just because it's not (easily) traceable doesn't automatically mean they'll get away with it, it just means that police might have to do some actual detective work rather than having the techno-nanny hold their hand. Shocking, I know.

Funny how, "lawmakers" seem to often ignore the "law" of the land. The American constitution is supposed to be the measuring stick/regulations by which other laws are judged. If they do not measure up, they have to be repealed.

A democracy stops working for the benefit for all as soon as people stop ignoring the constitution.

When the laws are working for the benefit of all, some people will not be happy and some people will not get what they want. I know some of you believe that guns are evil but criminals will always find a way to procure guns. The majority of gun related violence is perpetrated by criminals. When I say gun violence, I am not just talking about deaths but also non-lethal injuries and use of guns for intimidation. The anti-gun people are too focused on individual stats and do not stop to consider armed robberies where nobody gets shot during the robbery. That is still a use of guns as a weapon to intimidate/coerce others into doing something against their will.

Note that paper prints are more than sufficient to machine modern firearms. About 2000 bucks gets you a used manual milling machine. About the same gets you a lathe. You can use those to build a machine to cut a rifled bore if you wish. It's very old technology.

Remember the DeCESS T-shirt? Weapon prints can be protected speech too. They can also be incorporated into fiction as an illustration.

"Terrorists can make these guns and do some horrible things to an individual and then walk away scott-free [...]"

Now I'm not an expert on American law and I'm not an American and English is not my native language, but it sounds just a little bit implausible to me that there would be a law that said that it is not illegal to murder people if you make the gun yourself...

Or I guess maybe scott-free means something completely different than scot-free, like you're free like a character in a Scott movie, or something.

Or maybe the senator's best friend owns a gun factory.

Or I guess maybe the senator has a wildly inaccurate idea of what a 3-d printer is. I mean, it's probably easier to get fingerprints and DNA off of a metal gun than a plastic gun. A metal gun is really hard to destroy, but it would not exactly be trivial to destroy a plastic gun without the neighbors noticing.

By the 1980s the Soviet Union had matched the United States in military might and far surpassed it in the production of steel, timber, concrete, and oil. But the electronic whirlwind that was transforming the global economy had been locked out by communist leaders. Heirs to an old Russian tradition of censorship, they had banned photocopiers, prohibited accurate maps, and controlled word-for-word even the scripts of stand-up comedians. In this compellingly readable firsthand account, filled with memorable characters, revealing vignettes, and striking statistics, Scott Shane tells the story of Mikhail Gorbachev's attempt to "renew socialism" by easing information controls. As newspapers, television, books, films, and videotapes flooded the country with information about the Stalinist past, the communist present, and life in the rest of the world, the Soviet system was driven to ruin. Shane's unique perspective also places one of the century's momentous events in larger context: the universal struggle of governments to keep information from the people, and the irresistible power of technology over history.

Senate Bill 47 (Yee) expands the definition of “assault weapons” to BAN the future sale of rifles that have been designed/sold and are equipped to use the “bullet button” or similar device, requires NEW “assault weapon” registration of ALL those semi-auto rifles that are currently possessed to retain legal possession in the future, and subjects these firearms to all other “assault weapons” restrictions.

My impression of him is that he is a reactionary that responds to any situation in the most forceful way possible to please the pundits who are calling for action that the constituency doesn't actually want. He doesn't actually understand what he's legislating against in many situations, like as mentioned below the ban on video games for minors but because the pundits call for it something needs to be done.

The 3d printer is no different. Damn all the useful things that can be done with it he doesn't understand it and it can do one bad thing so ban it.

While I agree with the Senator, I believe we must act with comprehensive reform. Laser printers are being used to print counterfeit money. Those too should be regulated and tracked just as strictly as 3d printers. All printer owners should be tracked, registered, and of course, pay a government tax to cover all this tracking.

Take a deep breath and relax;) This guy isn't in Washington, just Sacramento. He's the same idiot - I mean CA state senator - who sponsored a law to regulate video games until the Federal court told him to piss off (ie ruled it unconstitutional). This legislation isn't going anywhere, and hopefully will just piss off enough people in SF that they finally vote the moron out of office...